Dongzhuang Drawings plays an important role in inheriting the
culture from generation to generation.

500 years ago, it witnessed the friendship between the Literati Art
Master Shen Zhou and the owner of Dongzhuang Wu Kuan. Now the amazing
piece brings Xiao Gu and Shen Zhou together across the time and space,
thus the remarkable Looking for Dongzhuang series came into being.

One day last year, I visited Mr. Xiao Gu and talked with him about
the Dongzhuang Drawings. He said that therere few people knowing about
Shen Zhous Dongzhuang nowadays. But I told him that I had read the
catalogue of Dongzhuang Drawings long time before.

With Shen Zhous master techniques and artistic conception,
everything in Dongzhuang came alive. The trees, flowers, fields, streams
and different buildings constituted a paradise of idyllic beauty, in
which the then hermits enjoyed their life and abandoned themselves in
the nature. Shen Zhou finished the collection and gave it to Wu Kuan as
a gift, trying to suggest him that he can also enjoy his life in art and
nature. The man who concealed himself in the chaotic world actually
processed an unyielding spirit.

The reason why Xiao Gu created this Dongzhuang Drawings lies in his
pursuit of the inheritance of traditional culture and the continuation
of the cultural context. He tries to show us an artistic world where we
can find peacefulness in it. In the end, Xiao Gu and his art language
found a homeland in the contemporary aesthetics.

Theres a mystery world hidden behind the images and our mind, where
words cannot tell all the essence. Both the free spirit of Shen Zhou and
the peacefulness of Xiao Gu all came out of the traditional Chinese
cultural spirit, showing us the literati belief and the aesthetic taste
of their own time.

Regardless the 500 years between them, Xiao Gu and Shen Zhou are
spiritually connected. And the Dongzhuang, which both of them place
their feelings for, is looking forward to be rediscovered and
reinterpreted in the new era.

Dongzhuang may be a paradise that we reached many times in our
dreams, or a place we yearned for a long time but had no chance to enter
ever. Yet ultimately we realize that Dongzhuang lies in the bottom of
our heart. It is a world of purity and sincerity; it forms our spiritual
homeland.

Lets give our gratefulness to Xiao Gu, who links us with our
spiritual home with Dongzhuang Drawings and gives Dongzhuang a new life.

d te�cs�@ � piritual hermit rather than the physical hermit in
traditional way, which means once you cultivate your nature and
comprehend the essence and seclusion, you can live a hermit life
anywhere. Shen Zhou was one of the representatives of Jiangnan (lit.
regions south of the Yangtze River) hermit in the middle of Ming
dynasty. As the famous scholar of Ming dynasty Lu Can said, Suzhou has
been famous for its profound culture and active literati, not only
because those famous scholars who have great political career, but also
for therere hermit scholars in different times. Among them, Shen Zhou
was rated highly by posterity for his noble character and personal
cultivation.

Here in this collection, Xiao Gu is trying to explore the spiritual
core of Shen Zhous art and find out the literati nature hidden behind
his hermit ideology. Piles of evidence indicate that it was the
particular history background that led to Shen Zhous final decision.
Back to the early Ming Dynasty, lots of Suzhou intellectuals were
persecuted by the Ming Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang. According to the then
scholar Lu Rongs recall, most of the officials at that time served the
imperial government wholeheartedly, but in return many of them were
cruelly punished for tiny mistakes. Only few of them could get a
peaceful life in the end. The severe political environment frightened
most of Jiangnan scholars in the early Ming dynasty, and the shadow
remained until Shen Zhous time.

As a result, Shen Zhou never started his official career in his
whole life. He regarded himself as a hermit. Although he had many
official friends, he always kept a safe distance from the imperial
government. In this way he was concealing in the crowd and abandoned
himself to poems, paintings and the nature. The owner of Dongzhuang, Wu
Kuan, was one of Shen Zhous official friends. Shen Zhou finished the
Dongzhuang collection and gave it to Wu Kuan as a gift, trying to
suggest him that he can also enjoy his life in art and nature. It seems
that Shen Zhou was a coward who is concealing himself in the chaotic
times, yet actually he was very brave and processed an unyielding
spirit.

Xiao Gu has been working for Dongzhuang Drawings series for six
years, during which time, he sticks to his unique pursuit of art and
tries to utilize the deep but characterized cultural text to display his
national heroism and aesthetic appreciation. In general, we define
traditional Chinese art as artistic expression and western art as
artistic representation, but its not the whole story. Chinese art pays
great attention to the spirit and artistic conception, so does western
art. Xiao Gus extraordinary understanding of traditional Chinese
cultural spirit and incredible master of oil painting helps him
transform the traditional Chinese art into a contemporary form.

Xiao Gu has always been working on art in his own way. With profound
realism skills and his unique two-and-a-half-dimension structure, he
innovatively creates the Chinese style paintings in an expressionist
way. Those paintings are full of vivid Chinese art spirit and contain a
transformed visual space. Figural still, but his art represents a
combination of different colors and meanings.

Xiao Gus interests and thoughts in traditional culture leads to his
success in combining the tradition with contemporary. To him, painting
works just as a tool to express his spirit and thoughts. That is also
why when you watch closely at his pieces, you will be strongly touched
by the culture behind, and it definitely comes from the continuation of
Chinese traditional spirit.